


and even in death

by magistrate



Category: Chalion Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold, Red Dead Redemption (Video Games), Red Dead Redemption 2
Genre: AU Theology, AU Worldbuilding, Afterlife Fiction (sort of), Alternate Universe, Character Vignettes, Funerals, Gen, dying, faith - Freeform, less depressing than the tags make it sound, massive full-game spoilers, the Five Gods are fricking friendly Elder Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 22:32:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18291563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magistrate/pseuds/magistrate
Summary: In Dutch's mind, it's simple. They're outlaws. The Bastard is the only God who'd take them.The Gods, as usual, don't care much for human expectations.(Or: funeral conventions in the van der Linde gang, if RDR2 had the theology of Lois McMaster Bujold's World of the Five Gods.)





	and even in death

**Author's Note:**

> _All over the world_   
>  _There are confused people, who can't remember_   
>  _The name of their dog when they wake up, and people_   
>  _Who love God but can't remember where_   
>  _He was when they went to sleep._
> 
> _It's all right._
> 
> _The world cleanses itself this way..._
> 
> — Robert Bly

The van der Linde gang always used horses.

Well, except, for a time, Copper had stood in for the Son. He was the God's own color, after all, and male, and a hunting dog — or Hosea insisted on trying to _make_ him a hunting dog, though if his riding out with Arthur decided what he was, he was more of a robbing dog, and that should have made him the Bastard's. But the Bastard's color was white, and He was crafty, and cunning, and mischievous; the natural patron of outlaws, Dutch said. So Dutch claimed that honor for the Count, as he'd claimed it for Thoreau before him.

But, fortunately, they'd needed fewer funerals in those days.

The funeral miracle was the most common miracle; the one divine grace granted to every soul at their final passing. There was no communication with the deceased, no chance to say anything left too long to say. But the Gods let Their supplicants know which of Them had gathered the soul up, as it passed on. Who had shepherded them especially into... whatever hereafter awaited them.

Mother. Father. Daughter. Son.

Bastard.

Jenny, they buried the same day they butchered Boadicea. A brief pause in their fleeing northward; a day caught from the teeth of their pursuit by some luck or happenstance, and seized upon, because they needed rest. Because three of their horses were lamed, and they had been carrying a dead body for days. Because nerves were thin, and faith might snap at any moment. So: they had paused long enough to give Jenny her rites.

They'd laid her out on a flat rock; no bier to be had here. It would have to do. They always made do.

Lenny led Maggie, with a blue scarf draped over her withers for the Daughter; Karen and Old Belle stood for the Mother that day, with one of Molly's green stoles draped over the horse's back. Silver Dollar hardly needed the grey blanket folded over him; he and Hosea looked the part of the Father's advocates, if nothing else. Brown Jack's coat had been curried enough, though hastily, that his dull brown at least shone a little. The Son would have to content Himself with that.

And Swanson, who _had_ been a Temple Divine once, brought out his texts, and read the sermons. Because apparently the Gods didn't care if a man broke all his Temple oaths: They would grant the miracle, all the same.

And They must have reached down, because all the horses stood, placid and calm and just as horses would... save Maggie, who shook off Lenny's hold on her reins and went to Jenny's body, and folded herself down beside her. Laid her head across Jenny's chest and closed her eyes, and sighed in a kind of contentment an animal rarely had cause to express. A kind of holy fervor. Or holy fulfillment.

It was no surprise, for all that tears hinted themselves in Lenny's eyes, and fell freely from Tilly's, from Abigail's.

Jenny had been young, and childless, and hadn't dedicated herself in service to any other God. The Daughter was her natural patron, and Swanson hadn't even waited for the testimony of the animals before turning to the pages for the Daughter's closing prayers.

It was weeks later, sitting by the fire at Horseshoe, when he — deep in his cups, and with one of his texts splayed open across his lap, perilously close to the fire itself — admitted, "You don't need to be a Divine, you know. You don't even need to be a dedicat. All these divisions we make... all the devotion... it matters to humans. The Gods don't care. The Gods don't care if you pray or sing Their hymns. They don't care if you attend Their sacred holidays. They don't care if you take Their names in vain, or perform... elaborate investitures, in Their names. All the sacred things... all the temples... all the oaths... it's all human. There's nothing divine about it. Nothing divine at all."

At the ceremony in the Grizzlies, though, he read the prayers, and closed. "Thanks be to You, Daughter, for compassion and beauty and renewal. Thanks be to You, Mother, for bringing forth life, for healing and nurturing, for teaching and guidance. Thanks be to You, Son, for bravery and steadfastness, for the gifts of the forest, for the glories of contest, for feasts and fortune. Thanks be to You, Father, for justice and wisdom, and for Your protection." He cleared his throat, and shut the text. "For Your gifts too, we thank You, Bastard, Lord of the Unseason."

And they buried Jenny, well as they could, and the next day were on the run again.

In Colter, when the weather broke enough for them all to gather outside, the Count sauntered to Davey like the ceremony were for _him_. Tossed his mane, reared a little, danced on his hooves — almost stepped on Davey's head before Dutch, chuckling a little, pulled him away. "Well, there's no ambiguity about _that_ ," he said. Ending a rite with the animal trampling the body would appeal to the Bastard's sense of humor — which was infamous enough, in company like this. "Divine Swanson, let the appropriate prayers be read."

Didn't matter if Dutch's chuckle was a little brittle around the edges.

The Bastard was the God of last chances. Patron to some. Punishment to others. The God who gathered up the scraps, who scraped the midden; the one who took souls all other Gods disdained.

And also the Lord of Hell; not worshipped as a God at all, still, in some parts of the world. Still cursed as a devil. Half-in, half-out of the pantheon.

A soul taken up by Him always left some ambiguity in its wake. Left _un_ rest that followed the rest of them into the cabins, that kept the atmosphere with more of a shiver than it otherwise would have had.

The Bastard must have had more than just His Hell and His legions of demons. Must have, for He had a Temple order of His own, and gathered in all of His Divines; who would serve Him, anticipating endless torment? He must have had some afterlife of His own, or some path to some... shared Beyond, which awaited the stewarded souls.

But for all Dutch laughed in front of his cabin's fireplace, and raised his glass, and said "Outlaw to the end, our boy. We should all admire that devotion." —for all of it, the gang had to wonder what it _meant_ for Davey.

What it would mean for them, when their time came due.

* * *

In Horseshoe, a few of them got to talking.

Javier, already more than enough drinks down, waved a few of them over. "When I die," he said, "I don't plan on being taken up by _an-y-one_. I'm going to steal one of the sacred animals and ride away on it."

"You know that's not how that works, right?" Lenny said, taking his seat at the table. Beside Charles, who looked at him and didn't bother to make room, and didn't bother to join in.

"I don't know anything about death," Javier said. "But I'll let you know when I find out."

"You'll have to," Arthur said. "Lenny here is going to outlive all of us. We'll have to warm the afterlife up for him."

Javier laughed. "Maybe I'll just go someplace warm. Think the Mother will take me?" —the Mother's season was Summer, in all its heat and riotous growth. Hard to know whether Her afterlife was Summer, too. Hard to know if that was a question that made sense, whether afterlives had seasons, or were them.

 _Impossible_ to know, really.

"You'd better start praying now," Lenny said. "Go out to the Temple in Valentine. Take a few oaths."

"Javier as a Mother's dedicat," Arthur scoffed. "If he put on the greens of a Temple physician, he'd just sell poison to whoever came looking for healing."

"Hey," Javier said. Waved his bottle in Arthur's direction. "I don't sell poison. When have I ever – I _gave_ you that poison."

"Well," Arthur said, amiably enough, "I didn't mean to offend you."

"Who is it, really," Lenny asked. "Who do you think you're going with, when you're gone?"

Javier set his bottle down, and scoffed. "Come on. We all know it's going to be the Bastard. I mean, you know that. I know it. We... we all know."

"I don't," Lenny said. "Gods are forgiving."

"I don't believe that," Javier said, jabbing his finger into the table wood. "Not for a _second_."

"They've taken up thieves and sinners and outlaws before," Lenny said. "And not _just_ the Bastard. That man-killer out in Chicago, what was her name — she got taken up by the Mother, after it all. Killed twelve folk, and the Mother still wanted her."

"Well," Javier said, "it's different for girls. They're, you know, innocent."

"He missed the part where she killed twelve men," Arthur said, aside.

Lenny shook his head. "Whatever." He reached out, snagged one of the bottles from the table, shook it to find the dregs. "What about you, Arthur? Where do you hope you're going, when you go?"

"The Son, of course," Arthur chuckled. "I hear He has good beer."

"Well, you know the joke, right?" Javier asked.

Arthur made a noise to suggest that, sure, he knew all the jokes; if they'd been told in camp, they'd likely been told a thousand times, and he'd been there long enough for all of them. But Lenny looked over and said, "Which joke's that, then?"

"The Son is the God whose harvest of souls has... every poor sod whose last words were, 'Hey, boys! Hold my beer and watch this!' "

A ripple of laughter went around the table. Even Charles cracked a smile.

Javier, with the triumph of a successful joke-teller, turned his attention onward. "Who'd you want to go with, Lenny?"

Lenny cracked a grin. "Well, I figure it's gotta be the Daughter."

Javier choked on a laugh.

"No — no, think about it," Lenny said. "Company would sure be better than everywhere else. And I hear She likes poets." He grinned. "Seems an easier way than turning into a Temple physician."

"Green is the color you turn after Javier poisons you in the Mother's name," Arthur said, and got a bottle thrown at his head for his trouble. "How about you, Charles?"

Charles might have been happier not being part of the conversation at all. But he'd sat at the table, and hadn't left, and that meant something, by the customs of the camp. And he acquiesced to those customs, shrugged, and said "if the Bastard is the only one who'll take me, He's the one I'll go with."

"Yeah," Javier said, and reached out to clap him on the shoulder. Misjudged his own reach, missed, and slapped the table between them. "That's right. Outlaws for life, right? Like Dutch says. Outlaws 'til the end."

* * *

In Clemens Point, a few of them got to talking.

Or, Tilly and Lenny and Hosea got to talking about where they'd like to be buried, when it all came to an end. And Micah, sauntering by, got the thread of conversation in his ear, and sneered and walked off. Found Bill and Divine Swanson at the fire.

"Maudlin group Dutch has here, aren't they?" he said. "All this talk about dying. I don't know why you're all so eager for it."

Swanson pulled in on himself, like a leaf curling against cold. "Folk need certainty," he said. "Comfort."

"I ain't never needed either." Micah helped himself to the coffee that sat by the fire. "Dying is dying. We'll get there soon enough. No need to—" he snorted, spat. "go bellyaching about it."

"Well, there ain't much Goddamn mystery with you," Bill snapped. "You're headed straight for the Bastard's Hell."

The tone of Micah's voice was smooth and dry as snakeskin. Skinned over the anger that slithered underneath. "Now, that is the one thing I will not do."

"Oh, we all know He's the only one who'd take you—"

And Micah sneered, "No _God_ ever had time for me. I'll keep my soul, thank you kindly."

Swanson stumbled. Even sitting down, he stumbled. "The philosophers say — Saints have attested — a sundered soul is not free, Mr. Bell. It is _forsaken_. The soul loses itself by degrees. Forgets life, forgets its own name, and becomes no more a person than... than a..." He shook his head. "You would wander the Earth for a time, unseen, unknown, unheard. Unable to touch or be touch. Unable to make a sound. And you would diminish, day by day, until you were nothing. You would give up eternal life to wander the earth, to forget yourself in loneliness and despair?"

Micah's mouth slanted into a smile. "The Gods want my soul back, don't they?" He cleared his throat. "Hell, even the Bastard jumps on the leftovers. Like some starving all-powerful dog."

"I wouldn't describe it that way," Swanson said. "But yes, the Gods yearn for each soul, however great or tarnished. The harvest of souls is the repletion of Heaven."

"Maybe," Micah said, "I'd like being the one holding something _They_ can't have, for once."

* * *

The Son took Sean, of course. There was hardly any question. If ever there was a God who'd welcome banter and bragging, shit-slinging and that quick sarcastic wit, to His table, it was either the Son or the Bastard, and by tradition, the Bastard picked last. He took the leftovers.

Bill hardly wanted to let Brown Jack speak for Him. He was still brushing out the stain in Brown Jack's coat, when the rest of the gang had gathered around — a stain only Bill insisted he could still see, snapping at the rest of them, and still protesting that they couldn't have known. That there was no _way_ to know.

Dutch had finally handed the Count's reins to Charles. He walked up to Bill, dropped his voice to a growl, and said "We can't start the rites without a sacred animal for the Goddamn _Son_ , Bill."

"I'll be ready in a minute," Bill said.

"You're ready. Brown Jack is ready. Divine Swanson is ready. The God is ready. _Sean_ is Goddamn ready—"

Bill dropped the brush. Turned to Dutch. "You all blame me for what happened—"

"No one in this camp is blaming you!" Dutch said, before he really considered the truth of that. "But everyone is _waiting_ on you. Bill—"

There was a noise behind them. A ripple of startled yelps and surprised laughter. Dutch turned back. Bill turned.

Brown Jack took himself off to graze.

They'd wrapped Sean's head in bandages, concealing the damage as much as they could. He'd been laid out on a cot, with the gang and the other four horses — sacred for today, for this moment — ringed around him.

And on Sean's chest sat a brilliant red fox, tail flicking in amusement, Sean's bloody, dusty hat in his jaws.

"I think," Divine Swanson said, his fingers hovering over their place in his book of sermons, "that is a sign."

"I think the God got tired of waiting," Dutch said.

* * *

The question pressed close in that miserable shack in Lakay. Tilly was the one who spoke up.

"We got Lenny and Hosea back," she said. "Abigail and Charles... they were real fine. Got into the city and brought them out. We gave them their rites, and buried them together."

"Good," Dutch rumbled.

Tilly ducked her head. "Lenny went up with the Son, of course."

Youth and bravery, bravado and vigor. The Son should be pleased with young Lenny. "And Hosea?"

Abigail spoke. "Hosea was taken up by the Father."

"The Father." Dutch's eyes cut across to her, and held _fear_ for a moment, like she was giving him some portent. A forewarning of dire ill, and this news shook him more than anything else had done. "Not the Son?"

The Son: natural patron of childless men, of hunters, of the clever reckless humor of youth, not the sober wisdom of age. The one Dutch expected to go to. Hoped he might go to.

If the Son would take him. If he weren't tarnished too far for that shining Lord; too bloodied by mistakes, or mishap, or foul chance.

If — they'd had such _dreams_ —

"He was a father to all of us, Dutch," Tilly said, and dared to touch his sleeve. "Maybe that was enough."

Dutch pulled away, and went to the window. Scowled out past the rotting, flapping curtain, into the dreary gloom.

"The _Father_ ," he said, "is the God of justice. Of judgment. The patron of lawmen and courtrooms. He has no place for an outlaw, unless he keeps a Hell to match the Bastard's."

"The Gods don't see these things as we do," Swanson offered. His voice was soft, but firmer now than it had been for some time. More faith than fear.

Dutch stood there, back turned. On his face, turned away from them, was an expression like something had crumbled within him, or like a promise had been broken. Some faith betrayed.

The rest of the gang retreated, and left him to it.

After a time, Divine Swanson came to join him. Said nothing, but offered his presence, and whatever comfort theology could offer.

After a time, Dutch spoke his question.

"Do we see each other again, Divine?" he asked. "Who go to different Gods. Or are we trapped with our company by the choices we've made?"

Swanson was grave. But he bore up, here; as though he'd remembered he was a Divine, or had been, once. As though those Temple oaths had never truly left him, for all he'd tried to drown them in drink. "No one can say what the afterlife holds," he said. "But it is not designed for our torment."

"Not even the Bastard's Hell?"

"His Hell is... a special case." Swanson looked out the window. "But I believe... I _wonder_. Perhaps _torment_ is not the purpose."

"What else would it be?"

"Discipline. Purgation." Swanson signed himself, fingertips brushing each of the five theological points: forehead, lips, navel, groin, heart. "But it's only a theory. I'm no Saint; I could never empty myself of will in Their cause. And even the Saints have been denied knowledge of Heaven. The closest _any_ living man has seen is the door."

"We'll know when we get there," Dutch said.

"And until then, take refuge in prayer and the holy texts," Swanson answered. "Craft your life to be pleasing to Them that gifted it to you. And, as the Saints have said, perform your daily duties as they come to you."

"Daily duties." Dutch's mouth turned up; a small smile, a forced smile, too heavy to hold for long. "Divine... I don't know... what to _do_ , from here."

The admission was orphaned. Bill came blustering in through the door, and soon they had much bigger worries to attend to.

* * *

John tried.

He had enough of Arthur's things. He had his journal, and the man had bled out into that, hadn't he? The texts he'd heard so often in the childhood he half-remembered, the sermons Swanson had muddled his way through... they said that art, music, poetry, was made of the same stuff as souls. It was supposed to have been a Saint, that said that. And if that were so, then Arthur had left some soul in that journal of his; so it were _like_ leaving a body behind. After a fashion.

So, across the border to Canada, he laid the journal out. Brought one of the horses Tilly had bought for them, using the money Arthur had given her; scrounged up what he could find in the sacred colors. A changing leaf had to do for the Son of Autumn; Abigail's blue blouse for the Daughter of Spring. He took Jack's white shirt for the Bastard, and felt like a bastard himself for it; though the boy _would_ have to bear that brand, and likely worse.

Set aside Arthur's own hat, grey and black, for the Father of Winter. Had to hack an evergreen bough for the Mother of Summer, and hope She'd forgive him for offering such an emblem of Her Husband's season.

He laid them all out, around the journal. Led the horse over. Fell to his knees, and tried to remember any of the prayers a Divine would say; tried to remember any of the teachings he'd mostly learned to scorn in the years that had gone by.

"Lords of Light... in this hour that our departed... this hour that this man has departed... Lords of Light, ah, a miracle, we beseech you..."

The words had always been a droning in the background; all his attention had been on the miracle, every time. He stumbled, catching on fragments as he remembered them, then abandoned it altogether. Ended his prayer with the only thing he knew to say:

" _Please._ "

And turned to watch the horse.

Who turned her head away from him, and went to go nibble at a low bush, already nipped brown by the cooling weather.

John got up. Led the horse back to the little pile of offerings, and went to his knees again. Tried to pray again, tried to get anything out, and the mare took the chance to step away.

He dragged her back the third time, hand harder on the reins that it needed to be. " _Please_ ," he said, again. "Just tell me. Just _tell_ me! Give me a _Gods-damned **sign**!_"

She tossed her head, hard; caught him in the chest, put him on the ground. Walked away to continue her dinner.

That was a sign, all right.

A sign that the Gods _wouldn't_ sign for a relic like this. That was why — all those sailors' traditions, leaving this or that behind; a lock of hair, a kerchief soaked with blood. Some relics were... more successful than others. The old Greeks, John was told, had cut the last bone in the small finger of the left hand and left it with their mothers or wives.

The gang had never gone for that. Dutch would never have permitted it, even if they'd had anyone drunk or morbid enough to agree to it. For one, keeping remains around were as troublesome as keeping treasure; there was no place to store them that mightn't get lost or stolen or bashed to pieces when a wagon broke a wheel and spilled its cargo... and leaving it with anyone was a bet that you'd die before them. Uncouth, to bet on that. And difficult. There never was a way to know.

For another, it would have been an admission that they were mortal. That they might die.

Well... they'd died. And no swagger or bluster, on Dutch's part or theirs, had stopped that.

John gathered up his family's things. Kicked the evergreen bough and the leaf away, for good measure. That was it, then; he'd had one chance to hear the message, the bright miracle promised to all upon their deathbeds, and the chance hadn't been a chance, at all. No way back from that. Wasn't as if they published the funerary miracles of criminals in the newspapers. No; just hangings, just crowing the triumph of law. John wasn't sure they even performed the rites.

Only consolation was, the rites were only a message. Gods didn't care if rites were given or not. Gods gathered up their harvest either way — eagerly, fervently, if the holy texts were to be believed, like lovers reuniting with their beloveds.

John wasn't sure how much he trusted the holy texts. And he wasn't sure which lovers' homecoming he should look to for comfort on that score; half the times he'd met with Abigail, she'd tanned his hide for something.

But in the end, he supposed it didn't really matter.

What was done was done. All that it meant, in the end, was he might never know what happened to his brother's soul.

* * *

Charles found the body on a mountainside.

Abandoned there; no other bodies had been left below it, though from what he'd heard, the Pinkertons had waged some ferocious battle on these slopes. That's what the newspapers had said. Fighting _the last remnants of the Van Der Linde gang_ , and Charles wondered what that had meant, in the end; how many of them there had been, how much of an accounting they'd made.

The newspapers hadn't listed casualties — not for the Pinkertons. He knew there had to have been some.

But they'd recovered their own, and brought them down from the mountain for rites to be performed, and for the bodies to be shipped off to next-of-kin. No such consideration for Arthur, lying for the crows, as though the Pinkertons could throw that defiance into the teeth of the sky.

His was the only body left.

Charles knelt.

He felt grief, true. Sadness, anger, all dried like old blood, brittle to the touch. But more than that, he just felt... emptiness. He had no words to speak.

He bowed his head.

All his life, he'd simply gone forward, when there was no path before him. Followed a path, when it showed itself to him. Turned aside, when the path grew too rocky underfoot. He'd been like water, finding its way downhill; like wind, turned aside by the first wall it came to. And if others looked at him, and saw some strength in the lack of everything else... well, people looked at him and saw all manner of things.

Didn't mean nothing.

That creature that he was, that confused animal — that _man_ , for no bird or beast ever wondered so much at what it was, or what it was meant to be doing — that creature was something none of them could touch. None of them had cared to see.

None of them, because he was closer to himself than any of them, and felt nothing of a truth, therein.

Once, in a camp — before Blackwater, before Colter, out by Deer Creek, in a pretty enough glade — he'd sat by the fire, still unsure of his place in the gang. Caught the tail of one of Divine Swanson's long, meandering sermons, him half-drunk on whiskey, half on wistfulness, or worship:

_The Saint's soul is not a great soul, but an empty one. The Saint freely renounces will, and in so doing, allows the Gods to work their will in the emptiness._

Well, he'd made it sound like there was some virtue in just... not knowing. Wondering, wandering. But—

_The Gods do not grant miracles to further the aims of man; no, nor for their education, nor for their progress, nor comfort nor pride. The Gods weave a symphony across the world, and draw their own melodies across the strings men weave for them. The Saint's will becomes the God's will, and the Saint becomes the instrument of God; the Saint is played but when the God requires music. Yea..._

A brief hope, a momentary glimmer. But even in emptiness, Charles had never believed he was a fit vessel for a God. No God had ever found use for him.

Miracles were vanishingly rare.

Saints, even more so.

But... the Gods were... kind, in this one way. Or generous. Or it suited Them, to let this be known.

He'd brought ribbons in all the colors. Bought them from a general store. Hadn't stopped in to ask a Divine how one set up a rite, with only a single horse and five colors, but he knew it could be done; figured that he'd figure it out when he got here. But pulling them from his satchel seemed cold, impersonal; as though he'd come up to do some task, like sweeping out a dusty corner, and then he'd be gone again.

He might have said something. _Good evening, brother._ But there was no one here to hear him. If Arthur's soul had been snatched up — and how could it not have been? — he was in the company of the Gods, now. And if it hadn't—

If it hadn't, he'd long since faded to nothingness. Or to so little that he no longer remembered Arthur, the man, or the life he'd left behind.

So, Charles didn't know what to say. What to do. Empty, lost as much in this small respect as in the great ones, he knelt before the body and reached out. Laid his hand on Arthur's chest, on the mouldering vest leather, on the bones above the space a heart had filled.

And was suddenly —  _Elsewhere._

Some Place that was laid over the mountain like a dusting of snow; like the light glowing up from a dusting of snow. His body was still on the mountainside, hand on leather above bone, but he was watching, in this place, here. Like a wisp of wind, invisible, intangible; only the watching was left, and not the watcher.

This Place... like a sunrise had spilled across the world, and then _become_ the world, in all its promise, all its molten light, all its vast awakening. Had spilled all around him — around _Arthur_ , his death itself a newborn thing, a crack in the world like the blowing open of a door. And a Presence was on the horizon, on the tip of his mind, so close, so close, so overwhelming, like trying to breathe the sun. _The Son, the Son_ , and he could _shatter_ at a glance from Him—

And then a cooler wind came, and the light greyed into something wry and august, that ached like mountains in its majesty.

And, not in word, but in sheer heart and meaning—

 _Will you come?_ the Father asked.

There was no bluster before that Presence. All men were small as infants; smaller. Small enough to hold in a palm, to be taken in by the glance of an eye, and yet at the moment of death, this vast Being turned His attention wholly upon _one._

And this _one_ hesitated, and the hesitation was the leaden weight of fear in Charles' soul. And a thorn at the heart of Him who asked.

He was the God of judgment. A towering Mind of threat and censure.

Justice, rather, Charles remembered.

And this one soul, before Him, wavered, and felt _Thought I'd avoid ending my life in front of a Judge._

Waiting for condemnation. Waiting for the sentence to be passed.

 _You have spent your whole life before Me_ , the God replied. And asked again, _Will you come? You have traveled far already._

Justice, rather.

 _Justice don't have no place for an outlaw._ Dutch's words. Dutch's sentiment. Deep-rooted; deeper than the sickness that had taken him.

Answered, by amusement enough to form continents. Anger enough to shatter them. Too vast, too vast. _You would tell Me who I invite to My hearth?_ And a sense passed between them— _Hosea_ ; Hosea, who'd been a father to all of them, for all he was a childless man.

Grief. Just as dark and deep as a grave. _I weren't no father to Isaac. I can't claim that._ A private grief, and Charles could only guess—

And it weren't his place to guess.

 _I weren't a good man._ A lifetime's worth of sins; a soul's worth of remembering. All of it laid bare, stark and indelible, in the cool grey light. _Maybe I tried at the end, but that don't make up for nothing. If I been before You, You must have seen how little... how little any of it was._

 _I have seen much_ , the God said. _Not little._ And the cool grey light held — all of it.

Good and bad, honor and cruelty, mistakes and brilliance, all. A weaving too complex for even this strange sight to follow. Not a flawless soul; a great one.

For an instant — misplaced; a slip of the attention, if there were here such a thing — Charles wondered if all men, so illuminated, were revealed to be as great.

 _I don't know_ , felt Arthur. _I don't._

No God could compel a man's will. No God — not even the Bastard, with his storied Hell — could gather up a man unwilling. Charles didn't know if the cracking he felt was the yearning of a God denied, or his own fears. He wanted to beg, _No, don't turn away — don't fade to some forsaken ghost in the mountains, here, not for this; listen to Him; He'll accept you, can't you hear Him saying—_

But there was no one here. This was a memory, an echo, a long delayed miracle of telling, and there was no one on the mountainside to hear him.

 _Well,_ the God said, _there is but one way to learn._

A hand held out. A door held open. And in this timeless place, an Attention which would would hold as long as necessary for that icy despair to melt.

A God of winter. And winter was also the odd warm days, when the sun breathed clemency, and the snows melted into rills before it snowed again. Was also fat white hares and slumbering bears, and creatures that found warmth in burrows, or in industry, or in herds. Was also the crackling of a fire in a hearth, and fire-warmed embraces for those that returned.

Was also fond memories of autumn. And promises of spring.

Nothing, Charles thought, in this world or the Gods' own, existed in isolation.

Condemnation. Forgiveness.

Virtue. Sin.

Death.

 _You,_ Arthur wondered, _want **me**._

 _Will you come?_ the God offered, again.

Wonder. A dry laughter. _Will there be horses there? Or campfires? Cigarettes? Cards?_

And an answering fondness, amusement, as vast as the sky. Vaster. And close as a parent helping their child up from a fall. _All love and delight finds its way to My home, eventually._

 _Well,_ felt Arthur. _Well, then._

And he accepted.

And Charles saw—

He _saw_ —

He _Saw_ ——

The moment, quick as a glint, vast as a world, of a soul passing from its mire in the world of flesh and matter, into the world of souls, of the Gods; a world he couldn't so much as glimpse. Just glimpse the change it wrought, as pain and dying dropped away; as something more whole than it had ever been in flesh crossed some threshold, and came finally Home.

He would have thrown himself from any height, if only he could follow.

It lasted less than a heartbeat. And then he was in the world, again, the leather under his hand, tears streaming down his face. His body heaving, great wracking sobs; not sadness; not quite relief. Certainly something too big for flesh and blood and muscle and bone to enclose. He'd _glimpsed_ a God; glimpsed His presence, or the memory of His presence, or His passage — like wind in the plains grass, or the carved paths of ancient waters past now-dry stone — and how a Saint could bear to touch one's very _will_ and not shatter was—

Was—

He no longer envied them.

Didn't know if he could ever again even bear to be a funerary animal: to come so close to miracle, like a man freezing in the cold and spying a campfire too far away, or across a river, or with a circle of backs turned to him. _Two_ Gods — the Son, and the Father both—

_You will see Them again. Them, or Someone much like Them._

The words were not... _quite_... his own thoughts.

Some folk thought... some brushed it off, some believed... the funeral rites were for everyone, after all. A President, a famous man, a beggar off the street. A criminal. So, it was common, in the eyes of many. Unremarkable because it was not _rare._

No way for Charles to think that, now.

So, it was common.

Miracle, nonetheless.

He felt hollow. Washed out. Like the wind would blow and play him like a flute. But there were words, running around and around the edges of his mind, like a river pebble swirled around the inside of a bowl; a phrase from the Father's Prayer. _Blessed are those who give themselves to justice._

_Blessed are those._

He rose, and gathered the bones from the mountainside.

**Author's Note:**

> _...and you find your soul_   
>  _And greatness has a defender, and even in death_   
>  _you're safe._
> 
> — Robert Bly


End file.
